The Mercenaries Golden Four is a tournament which is inspired by bigger clan leagues/tournament hosted in the past but adapted to a smaller format. The main idea is to be as permissive as possible when it comes to the class players can pick from when making their team composition and use as many mercenaries fixtures as possible while providing an enjoyable experience for those wishing to partake into this competition. The tournament will be divided into two stages; one group-stage which will later give access to direct elimination playoffs.

You are free to sign-up as a team representing a certain Mercenaries clan or as a group of friends without any particular banners as long as you have read and agree with the rules. One clan can have several teams registered for this competition.

The sign-up phase will open today and close on Friday 9th of November, leaving you with a total of two weeks to sign-up. The tournament will start on Monday 12th of November. The group-stage will take place until Sunday 16th of December, followed by a Christmas/New Year break lasting until Monday 7th January, where will continue with the last phase of the tournament, the playoffs.

The limit of sign-ups is fixed to twenty teams, for now. Would there be a bigger interest, we may reconsider extending that limit as long as it fits the tournament format.

1) While interacting with other members of the tournament, that it be staff, other players or potential streamers, you are expected to always remain polite and respectful. If someone shows a poor attitude such as displaying rudeness or immaturity, he or she will be punished by the tournament administration. Said punishments are applied with a three-strikes policy: the first incident will result in a warning, the second into a match suspension and the third incident might lead to the complete and immediate removal of the offender from the tournament. It has to be mentioned that depending on the severity of the incident, the tournament administration reserves itself the right to jump directly to the last level of punishment without prior warning and/or match suspension.

2) Any player that incites, participates in or attempts to exploit disruption of matches, practices sessions or organisation of other teams will be barred from playing in their match as punishment for a first offence and removed from the tournament in the event of a second offence. If it appears that several players of the same team were involved together in one or several incidents, said team might face its complete and immediate removal from the tournament.

§ 2 Cheating

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1) It is strictly prohibited to gain an advantage by using game modifications, cheats, or hacks such as texture replacers/recolours, aimbots, or autoblock. Every player that is found to have modified texture files or caught cheating in other ways will be banned from the tournament.

(2) Exceptions from § 2 1) are listed in Appendix A.

(3) If a player is found to have cheated in any of these ways during a match then that player's team will forfeit the match.

Tournament Format

§ 3 Tournament Format

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(1) The Mercenaries Golden Four is split into two parts: the group and the playoffs stages.

(2) The number of teams for the event is limited to twenty, for now. Each team will be divided into four groups of five. From each group, the best two teams will qualify for the playoffs.

§ 4 Group-Stage Format

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(1) The group-stage will consist of five weeks, taking place between Monday 12th November 2018 andSunday 16th December 2018.

(2) That group stage will follow a round-robin format. Teams are randomly assigned one of four groups. Each group have similar fixtures for each round of the group stage. There will be five rounds per group, but each team will receive a bye for one fixture during the qualifiers (i.e. there will be 5 rounds, but each team will only play 4 matches). The winners of each group will be decided by match wins, with ties broken by round difference. If they are still tied, then the result of the match between the two teams will be used to break the tie. The two top teams from each group will advance to the playoffs with their seed determined by their performance relative to the winners of the other groups.

§ 5 Playoffs Format

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1) The playoffs will consist of three weeks, taking place between Monday 7th January 2018 andSunday 27th January 2018.

2) The playoffs will be played out in a single elimination bracket, with the first team from each group taking seeds 1 through 4, and the second teams from each group taking seeds 5 through 8.

Roster Rules

§ 6 Team Rosters

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(1) Every team must provide the tournament administration with a roster consisting of four to six players at least 24 hours before their first match. Teams that fail to do so are not eligible to play in the tournament and will be eliminated.

(2) If you started the tournament with four or five players, you are allowed one or two additions to fill up your roster, during the group stage. Once the playoffs have started, rosters are locked and you may no longer add any players, even if you do have one or two remaining spots within your roster.

(3) Players who have previously played for a team during the tournament are no longer eligible to play for any other team during the rest of the competition. They may be removed from the team, but cannot be added to the roster of another team.

(4) Teams are permitted one emergency substitution for the duration of the tournament. This substitution is an exception to (2) and may only happen in a particular situation. The tournament administration will deal with the emergency substitution request case per case.

(5) Teams are not allowed to change their team name or tag once the group stage has begun.

(6) Teams are permitted to change their team banner one time during the tournament, which must be approved by an administrator.

§ 7 Multiteaming

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(1) It is strictly prohibited for a player to play or have played, for more than one team during the tournament. If a player is found to be on the roster for more than one team then that player will be ejected from the tournament. Teams that were complicit and knowingly allowed a player from another team to play for them will be disqualified.

§ 8 Characters

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(1) Each player from a team can be allowed several different characters. Each character must be listed as belonging to a certain player so that said player can use them during an official match. If a player is caught using a character which he wasn't listed with, this character will be treated like a player who doesn't belong to the team and that team may face punishment. It is your responsibility as a team leader to ensure all your players have their characters correctly listed while signing-up.

(2) Any players may add a character to their name at any point during the duration of the tournament.

Match Rules

§ 9 Match Server

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(1) All matches must be played on either Sabo or Krex servers. Servers will be listed on this thread. Both servers have different settings, the main one being the flag mod missing on Sabo’s servers. Keeping that in mind, teams are free to decide on which servers they want to play their matches.

(2) If teams cannot agree on a server, they have to ask a referee or tournament administrator for help.

(3) The servers are not at the one and only disposal of the tournament teams. If you want to make sure to have a server to play on, you have to book it, the same way you would book a Clan War. MGF matches have no priority whatsoever over a regular CW. It is the captain’s responsibilities to make sure they have a server to play on while organizing their matches.

§ 10 Referees

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Referees are available on request but are not mandatory. Requests for a referee can be made of the administration by either team’s captain.

§ 11 Players Gathering

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(1) Both teams have a grace period of 10 minutes after the agreed match start time to gather their players in the server. If a team fails to turn up with at least 4 players 10 minutes after the agreed match start, the other team may contact an admin and will be awarded a default win. If a team agrees to wait longer than 10 minutes for their opponent to finish gathering players, then they may wait up to 20 additional minutes (i.e. 30 minutes after the agreed time). If their opponent has still not gathered enough players, then an admin must be notified and a default win will be awarded.

(2) Teams are not obligated to wait more than 5 minutes between maps and sets and are allowed to enforce a restart after these periods of waiting.

§ 12 Players Names & Tags

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(1) Players must play with the name they are signed up under in the team roster. This follows the three-strike policy (warning, one-match ban, ejection).

(2) Players must wear the team tag during official matches. This follows the three-strike policy (warning, one-match ban, ejection).

§ 13 Match Format

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(1) Each match consists of 2 sets played on each of 2 maps, thus 4 sets in total. After the first set on each map the teams will swap spawns. Each set will be won by the team that is the first to win 3 rounds. Each match will be won by the team with the higher number of rounds won at the end of the 4 sets.

(2) Matches should be played 4vs4. Teams must field 4 players before the match starts or forfeit the match. Teams are encouraged to begin each round with the same number of players. If a player has crashed, a team is allowed to start a round with 3 players. In the event that a team has fewer than 3 players at the beginning of a round, they will forfeit the remainder of the set. If they cannot find a substitute within the minimum 5-minute wait time between sets, then they will forfeit the match.

(3) Each team captain is responsible for ensuring that a screenshot is made of each set result. Unless a referee or admin was present, captains are required to post the score of their match and provide a screenshot for each set played.

§ 14 Substitutions

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(1) Substitutions are only allowed between each set, without restrictions. If a team substitutes a player during a set, then they are subject to the three-strike policy (forfeit the relevant sets, forfeit the match, disqualification).

(2) If a player crashes in-game, a substitution can be made after the round has ended, though this is limited to one substitution per set. A player counts as crashed once he drops out of the server.

§ 15 Tie Breaker

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(1) Due to the nature of the tournament, no match may end in a draw during the playoffs. Should a match end in a tie after the regular time, a tie-breaker must be played.

(2) Each week of the playoffs, one extra map will be given to the teams. Tiebreakers during the playoffs must be played on the aforementioned map. The format will be a first to 3 set, with the winner of the set taking the overall victory.

*Rules are subject to changes and must be checked on a regular basis.

**Rules are vastly inspired from the BladeCast Masters tournament on Native. Any credits for it, therefore, go to them.

The core of the tournament is here as most of the rule-set has been written. Later today I will publish a detailed post explaining most of the reasoning behind a certain rule or decision for the tournament. If you have any question, feel free to ask away, either it will be answered in the said post or I will provide you with a direct explanation.

I understand that the prospect of a tournament which allows literally any class to be played may be worrying for certain people but I wanted to host a tournament which isn't too restrictive. Bottom line, you can find anything 'cancerous' on Mercs, depending on how it is used. This tournament intends to reward the teams finding the best composition(s) and mastering them best. But if the popular opinion (and by the popular opinion I mean more than 4-5 people being salty about it) wants a class limit of any sort, I see no problem adapting the rules.

Its a test, it may or may not end up being great but I feel it's worth giving it a try.

- I am looking for one or several co-hosts, admins and referees to help me running the tournament. If you are interested, reach me on steam.

- The map poll is yet to be added but will be as soon as possible.

- I am also looking at someone who has some graphical skills to eventually make a header and several sub-headers. If you have time and you are up for it, it'd be appreciated.

As I was mentioning earlier on, here are some thoughts on the format I decided to use, alongside some rules reasoning. Hopefully, it might help some people understand things a bit better.

Format:

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This event was initially a way to introduce myself to the Mercenaries Community as I know a vast majority of you don't really know me. I have been hosting and adminning events on competitive NW and Native for more than four years now. I wanted it to be a 'small' tournament, firstly to limit the amount of work as I might have to host it alone; but also because such a format (4v4 with all class) hadn't been really used in the past and I wanted to give it a shot. I wasn't sure if the community was really active enough for something bigger, and I didn't feel like I was the right person to host an actual clan league anyways.

As for the 'all class' allowed, I simply wanted to encourage people to try and come up with new compositions and tactics without it necessarily being 8v8. As I said earlier, archers, 2handed, agi, throw, HA, anything can be annoying depending on what you like and dislike and by trying to please the majority, you end-up being overly restrictive. I find a bit sad considering the potential Mercenaries has when it comes to using different characters with different abilities. At the end of the day, it might turn into an actual shitshow but it could also very well be something funny which involves a bit of mind-game without actually try-harding too much.

PrizePool & Entry Fee:

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The current prize pool is entirely brought by myself. As I said above, not many of you know me, so I don't see why I should be trusted to not make it a big scam thing with an entry fee. The tournament preparation has been going for quite a few weeks already which gave me enough time to gather enough golds to make it a bit interesting. With that being said, the cuts for the last teams (alas these which don't make it out of the group stage) is rather insignificant so I will open donations for those who wish to make the prize poll grow. Any donations, whatever its amount might be, is greatly appreciated and will be listed on the OP so people can follow who donated and how much. Donations can also be anonymous if you wish to. Don't feel forced to donate, it must be genuine. Hopefully, by the time the tournament finishes, I will be able to add more golds from my own bank and therefore make the overall share more consequent for everyone.

So people gotta sign up as team, or do you randomize them?(too long to read, it's just this question haha)

You sign-up as a team yep. Here is the part about it:

You are free to sign-up as a team representing a certain Mercenaries clan or as a group of friends without any particular banners as long as you have read and agree with the rules. One clan can have several teams registered for this competition.